We know D.C. Get our free newsletter to stay in the know.

Unsubscribe any time.

8

MONDAY

My record-geek side admires Dario Robleto, even if my art-fag side is still unconvinced. After all, the 29-year-old San Antonio artist is just as obsessed with the history, mythology, and consumption of pop music as I am, and has made a career of creating fanboy-worthy works such as Trebledown Bassup (a fossilized bison bone covered with the melted vinyl of a Public Enemy album), This Mineral I Call a Beat (a facsimile keyboard made, in part, of pulverized Roy Orbison CDs), and If We Do Ever Get Any Closer at Cloning Ourselves Please Tell My Scientist-Doctor to Use Motown Records as My Connecting Parts b/w The Polar Soul (an installation that features the XR-50 Soul Separator, a turntable supposedly rigged up to extract the essence of classic Motor City sides). Robleto’s got great listening tastes, and his oeuvre, charged with references to record collecting, DJ culture, and various -ologies, is witty, au courant, and sometimes even beautiful. Too bad it’s just as often heavy-handed, overanalytical, and—irony of ironies—soulless. Hear Robleto argue otherwise at 3 p.m. at the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Hammer Auditorium, 500 17th St. NW. Free. (202) 639-1833. (Leonard Roberge)